


Queen's Choice(s): First Meeting(s)

by yunyu



Series: Queen's Choice(s) 'Verse [2]
Category: Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice (Video Game), 恋与制作人 | Liàn Yǔ Zhì Zuò Rén (Video Game)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst, Deception, F/M, Masturbation, Obsession, Pornography, Prequel, Scenting, Stalking, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-08-11 10:34:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20152207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunyu/pseuds/yunyu
Summary: A set of four one-shots telling, from the men's POV, their first meeting(s) with Emme.Contains spoilers for roughly the first 10 chapters of the ficQueen's Choice(s).ABO fic with the specific ABO aspects from that fic. If you didn't read and enjoy QCs you won't enjoy this (and it won't really make sense either).Intentionally not canon compliant.1. "Idiot": She's the purpose of his existence, so why does he keep nearly ruining everything?2. "Fool": The Queen was not the well-trained opponent he expected; where was the challenge, the interest, the struggle?3. “Sweetheart”: Loved by millions and loved by no one.4. "Angel": She'd saved his life once; she owed him nothing.





	1. "Idiot" - Victor POV

Victor Lee knew the importance of timing.

He had control over time, he bent it to his will. He knew just how critical it could be to do things in the right moment; even more so on the right day, week, month, and year. 

When he met Emme Xi in this timeline, it had to be perfect. She was going to be perfect, so he had to be perfect for her. 

He got impatient with his first attempt.

Victor stood in the very back of the auditorium during Emme’s high school graduation, carrying a dozen red roses. Nobody paid much attention to him; he blended in with all the other family and friends there to see their loved ones graduate. He was only two years out of university himself, having graduated with an MBA from the elite Tsinghua University in just four years. The investment company he had started had already paid back his father’s loan, but while among the financial elite he was beginning to be recognized as a rising star, he wasn't in any way famous.

He couldn’t take his eyes off of Emme. He had recognized her immediately, even though her hair was a natural black and she looked so young compared to the adult Emme of his childhood memories.

Why did she look so sad? This should be one of the best days of her life so far. She should be thinking about her bright future… though she couldn’t know just how bright that future would really be… that he was going to take her, _ take her_, give her everything… she didn’t need to go to university at all, really, he already had all the money anyone could want, could already provide for her and their children, and he was only going to get richer… though of course if she wanted to go to university he would arrange all the nannies and other childcare she would need, he wanted her to have everything she wanted… she would be happy with him, they were going to be so happy in this timeline and she would be _safe_...

Lost in these happy thoughts, the ceremony ended. Emme actually walked towards him when it was over. He wanted to say something, but her scent wafted over him and he was utterly struck dumb.

Her scent, her _ scent. _

As an eleven-year-old boy, a prepubescent, with a child’s admiration, he had known that the adult Emme was an omega but her scent had left no impression in his memory.

He was definitely not a prepubescent anymore.

_ Omega… an unbonded, ripe, delicious, wonderful omega… God she smells amazing! It’s such a full scent, so sweet but not cloying at all, it’s almost tropical… I want to _ drink _her scent, I can’t wait to lick her gland, kiss it, suck on it, I wonder what it’ll taste like when I _ bite _ it, I bet it’s even better than it smells… _

And as he was lost in a daze of these dirty thoughts, she merely glanced at him without recognition and walked past him, to a woman standing nearby.

Victor looked at them. This woman that Emme was hugging couldn’t be old enough to be her mother, not even her adoptive mother… a family friend? Where was the rest of Emme’s family? She had... an adoptive father at least, right? That's what the private detective had told him when he found her a few years back.

“Anna,” Emme cried, “thank you for coming.”

“Congratulations Emme,” this Anna answered, patting her back. “Your father would be so, so proud… I know he’s looking down on you right now and smiling, and he would want you to smile too, right? You’ve got busy days ahead. Don’t worry about anything here while you’re at university, okay? I’ll take care of your father’s company and it’ll be waiting for you.”

“You really think so?” said Emme, gratefully accepting a tissue from her friend to dab at her eyes. “You don’t think he’d be disappointed I couldn’t get into his alma mater?”

“Not at all!” Anna said. “Emme, are you kidding? You took your _ gaokao _ two days after your father died. I’m amazed you scored as well as you did, under the circumstances. Anyway, who cares if you didn’t get into a big name university? You don’t need an impressive resume, you just need to learn the skills, and I know you will. Riverport Arts University has an arts and business management program, it’s perfect for you. And you can still study literature like you wanted, too.”

Emme shook her head. “But the networking…”

“Your father already did lots of networking and I’ll make sure I keep his contacts up.” She patted Emme’s shoulders. “Come on now. This should be a happy day for you! You’re going to make so many new friends, have such great experiences… but just remember, you may not have your father keeping an eye on you directly, but you know how he felt about you dating.”

“Oh, definitely not,” Emme assured her. “I won’t have time, I’ll need to study!”

“And stay away from alphas,” Anna warned her. “There are some real predators out there. Don’t be alone with one, even if they say it's ‘to study’.”

“I won’t,” she promised, hugging Anna.

While they were hugging, Anna looked over Emme’s shoulder at Victor and gave him a suspicious look, and Victor realized he was staring. He turned away.

“Now how about you go put on some make-up so I can take your picture?” he heard Anna say, her voice getting farther away like she was leading Emme away from this strange staring man.

Victor couldn’t believe he had been so obtuse. He’d been consoling himself for years—since he himself had barely started high school—that the age gap wasn’t that large, that he just needed to wait until she finished high school and then they could be together. She’d be an adult, he’d be an adult, eighteen and twenty-four, that’s basically the same, right? A naive and childish idea of adulthood, yet somehow he had never bothered to reexamine it once he became an adult. Now that he was consciously thinking about it, he had to admit he hadn't let himself reexamine it because he wanted her so badly. Over the past week, he’d even been allowing himself to fantasize about taking her back to his apartment after her graduation banquet... and never letting her go again.

Exactly like a _ predator_, in fact. Of course, a predator is exactly how he would come across to anyone, not excluding Emme. A twenty-four year old alpha suddenly shows up at a high school graduation and introduces himself, with a bouquet of roses, to an orphaned omega he’d never met before who’s only barely legal?!

If he had actually followed through with such an idiotic plan, she probably would have called the police. And she would have been right to do so. Desperate alphas stalking unbonded omegas (with fatal consequences) were a constant feature in the news.

How could he have almost made such a mistake? He nearly ruined everything, nearly turned Emme against him forever…

Hardly knowing where he was going he walked out of the auditorium, dumped the roses in a trash can along the way somewhere, and made it back to his car.

Victor sat and rested his head against the steering wheel and breathed, trying to calm down.

He had been an _ idiot. _

——

The second time they almost met, Emme was twenty years old.

Victor’s net worth had hit one billion yuan, and he celebrated by donating a cool twenty million of it to Riverport Arts University.

Specifically their arts and business program.

“This is so far-sighted of you, Mr. Lee,” the university chancellor gushed effusively at the banquet they threw to celebrate his donation. “To choose a smaller university like ours shows that you understand the value of diverse voices in business and arts.”

“Mm,” Victor said noncommittally. “Will the scholarship students be here at the banquet? I would like to meet them.”

“Oh, of course, of course! All of them! Well, except for poor Miss Xi…”

_ Motherfucking bullshit fucking shit. _ “Hmm?”

“Yes, one of our most _ diligent _ students, _ very _well-liked among the faculty, I’m told… but she contracted viral meningitis, was in the hospital over a week with it. She’s written you a letter of gratitude, however! I have it here…”

Victor took the letter as if he didn’t care about it and put it into his jacket pocket.

Back at his new house that evening he poured himself a glass of wine and tossed it back, barely tasting it, before pouring himself another.

He pulled the letter out of the envelope.

_ Emme touched this… _

It was stupid, but he couldn’t resist putting the paper under his nose and sniffing.

It was faint, but it was there… that wonderful scent, so intoxicating and rich. And nobody was around now to see him huffing it like a madman, _ scenting _ it like he couldn’t do in public.

_ Coconut… the tropical notes are like creamy coconut… and the floral notes… are like honeysuckle… oh God, what a combination... _

The letter was professional and began by thanking the Marie de Montre Memorial Foundation for its generosity blah blah blah.

Victor felt like strangling his tax advisor and then using the dead body to bludgeon himself. Why hadn’t he made the donation under his own name?! Or at least named the foundation after himself, instead of after his grandmother. Or made the donor his company! Now she would have no reason to connect her scholarship to him, no reason to seek him out… He had bungled it again. He had completely wasted twenty million yuan!

He looked back at the letter.

_ This stipend will allow me to quit my part time job and focus totally on my studies. It will make such a difference to my quality of life. I cannot thank you enough and I promise I will study even harder to justify your faith in my potential! _

Victor couldn’t help smiling.

He’d made Emme’s life easier, even if he couldn’t reveal yet it was him; that was worth any amount.

And he’d bought himself this scent…

His hand went to his belt buckle. He was already so hard.

_ This is pathetic… I’m jacking off to a thank you note. _

His cock couldn’t give less of a shit how pathetic it was as he breathed in the scent of a young, fertile omega, no matter how faint it was.

_ Oh Emme… I want you so bad, I want to fuck you so bad… _

His eyes squeezed shut tightly as one hand kept the letter pressed up to his face while the other worked his cock furiously.

_ When I take you, gonna fuck you so hard, you’re gonna feel so tight and wet around my cock. Gonna moan my name as I fuck you. So hot. Begging for my knot. Gonna give you my knot, Emme, oh God, gonna knot you, fill you up with my cum, gonna put my child in you… oh God! _

“Emme,” he moaned aloud, dropping the paper so that he could use that hand to squeeze the base of his cock as his knot swelled, as his cock pumped out ribbons of cum.

In post orgasmic clarity of mind, he was angry at himself again for this pathetic use of a flimsy prop and put it in the trash can.

When he woke up early the next morning he rushed back to his home office to save the letter before the cleaning staff could come in and empty the trash.

It lost its scent after a week but he kept it in his home office drawer even after that.

——

By the time Emme graduated university and came back to Loveland City, Victor was getting desperate, and he ended up doing something desperate.

More than desperate. Underhanded. Despicable. _ Predatory_. 

He bought Coordinate Entertainment, the company that held the primary investment in Dream Forward Productions, Emme’s inherited company, and ordered that funding be withdrawn from it.

Now all he had to do is wait.

He told himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He wasn’t doing something _ truly _evil, like demanding sex from her in exchange for his investment. He wasn’t going to make any demands at all, in fact; he fully intended to resume investing in her company as soon as she came in person to plead her case. Not just resume, but increase the investment substantially. And he was going to let her think that he was doing it because of her business skills only.

He wasn’t doing this to coerce her or pressure her, he didn’t _ want _ her to feel any pressure or coercion, he wasn’t like that.

They would _ meet _ , that was the important thing, they would meet and they would have a reason to keep meeting. He would have the opportunity to make himself someone she could trust and turn to, and she would fall for him, and then, then, _ then! _

No, there was definitely nothing wrong with what he was doing, not at all. He really cared about Emme, he would _ never _hurt her, he was doing this for her happiness as much as his. He would make her happy, give her everything she wanted and needed, take care of her and their children for the rest of his life, they would have decades and decades together, so what did it matter if he deceived and manipulated her for a few months at most?

The fact that he kept having to reassure himself that it was alright was a sign that he knew deep down it really wasn’t, but he just couldn’t take the waiting anymore.

Seventeen years. Seventeen long, lonely years.

And then he ended up meeting her in a way that he never intended.

He saw a brown-haired woman pause in a crosswalk to fish in her purse, totally oblivious to the oncoming taxi until it honked and she looked up, stunned into stillness.

_ Idiot! _

He froze time and went to pull her out of the way, just as he’d saved so many other fools from disaster.

But when he got to her, she wasn’t frozen.

As he carried her out of the street, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Who… who are you?”

_ It’s Emme. _

Emme is an evolver too?

He’s so surprised—by the fact that the idiot he’d just saved from certain death is Emme, by the fact that she’s an evolver—that all he manages to say is, “Evolver?”

He can’t even manage a verb?!

The utter blankness of her expression tells him she has no idea what evol is yet.

“You still don’t know… your ability must be just awakening, then…” The government had gotten better and better at identifying evolvers, so if she hadn’t heard from them yet, she must not have used it much yet. Or maybe she was lucky enough to have an evol that wasn’t flashy, and then she could escape detection… or would, unless she started trying to look into what “evolver” was because of his big mouth.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

_ I’m Victor, I was at the same orphanage as you and I’ve basically been stalking you from afar ever since you were in high school… no… _

_ I’m Chairman Lee of the LFG Group and I pretty much control your company’s future… no… _

_ I was once Jude Chen, I was eleven years old and you were my next door neighbour that I had a hopeless, childish crush on, I saw you die and I wanted to turn back time so much to save you that I somehow turned time back over twenty-five years, I believe we’re meant to be together and I want to bond with you and no! _

“You don’t need to know,” he said testily, “and you’d better just forget about what I said. And don’t be so stupid next time, someone won’t always be around to save you, you know.”

_ What the hell am I saying?! _

He just ran. Literally ran, let her go, let the time stop go, ran past surprised pedestrians until the redness in his cheeks could be from exertion instead of embarrassment.

He wanted to run so badly that when he stopped he immediately pulled out his phone and called Goldman to schedule a business trip for him.

He needed some time away.

Maybe then he could plan for how he would act around her.

Maybe she would forget this whole stupid accident ever happened?

Maybe he was an idiot.

———

While he was away, he tried to focus on business, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Emme.

He kept pulling up all the details of everything her company was doing, all of Goldman’s notes about his negotiations with her, and everything about what she had done while she thought her company was at the point of bankruptcy.

Her reactions, her behaviour, her beloved show…

All of it was so…

Stupid.

Just a stupid young woman who had inherited way more than she could handle. A timid little omega who was completely incapable of the leadership and hard decisions necessary for running a business, yet who didn’t have the sense to hire someone to do it for her. A sentimental fool who cared more about saving a trite, low-class show than about keeping her business from going under altogether.

She wasn’t special, she wasn’t the Emme he remembered, the woman who was so kind, yet so funny and feisty, whom everyone spoke of as a brilliant success, a sensation in the entertainment industry, accomplishing so much as a young omega woman in an alpha male dominated field!

He sat in the dark in a hotel room in Hong Kong and felt despair.

Of course… it’s just what would happen in this shitty world…

The present time was already so different from what the 2010s had been in the original timeline… even his own birth mother was already dead, dead before she even met his birth father…

Why should it surprise him that Emme would turn out to be someone different?

Well.

He might as well keep living, right?

Victor laughed bitterly. How dare he feel sorry for himself? He was a billionaire, he had a supermodel omega begging to be his wife… not that he wanted Chik anyway, but that wasn’t the point.

He’d forget about Emme eventually. Forget about this whole mess.

Move forward.

————

Victor scented her the moment the elevator doors opened to his floor.

She wasn’t pumping out her pheromones or anything, nothing like most single omegas did around him. It was merely the natural amount of pheromones that an omega released unless they made a conscious effort to stop them.

And yet that mild scent was still so intoxicating to him.

It made him angry.

“Why are you here?” he said as he marched over to her, heedless of how his employees were puzzled by his noticing her.

She looked up and looked absolutely flabbergasted. “Y-y-y-you!” she stammered pathetically, then flushed and leapt to her feet.

Goldman blabbered some unneeded introduction of her, as if Victor didn’t know every boring detail there was to know about this utterly mundane woman.

“The series finale of Miracle Finder got a huge response online, and I was hoping you would maybe, um, maybe reconsider pulling the funding, and…”

Unrehearsed, full of qualifications, reeking of desperation. She was actually pretending to be a business owner? “Why should I?” he interrupted bluntly.

“Well… well because, we, we did a really good job, and…”

This little fool. Had she somehow made it to twenty-two years old still thinking life should be fair? She would never cut it in business, never. Really, forcing her to give up was a kindness. He chuckled. “Listen up: I’m not going to save you again.”

When he turned and walked away from her, he fully intended never to see or think about her again. Her company would go under and there would no longer be any reason for them to ever meet. Maybe it was cold, but she was an omega, anyway, she would be fine; she would have no problem finding some alpha to take care of her, one who didn’t care how stupid and foolish she was...

But she chased after him.

“Since the founding of LFG, its investments have focused heavily on real estate, finance, and electronics. But recently it’s been making a strategic shift towards culture, notably in the acquisition of Coordinate Entertainment. However, LFG has shown great caution in investing in the entertainment industry. Rightly so, because it’s a difficult business to make in-roads into anywhere, but especially in China. Television, which in most countries is an easier and lower-stakes route to break into entertainment, is monopolized by state-owned companies. Private companies have no access to the market, no matter how good their shows might be. Even though our studio is small, we've had a long-term partnership with Loveland TV, meaning that we have the contracts already in place with the state-owned media and the connections to renew the contracts and get more. Tristan Xi, the founder of Dream Forward Productions, spent over a decade building those up! If the company goes bankrupt, those contracts and connections are lost for good. Plus, Loveland City is the heart of Chinese culture, the rest of China looks here for the cutting edge. You won’t find a better place to begin a Chinese media empire anywhere else than by investing in us!”

He shut the door to his office behind him with a bang.

And leaned against it.

This idiot…

...was actually making a lot of sense.

If Victor _ had _ bought Coordinate Entertainment as a business decision, then letting Dream Forward Productions go bankrupt would be the absolute dumbest thing he could do.

But he hadn’t. He had done it for Emme. So he could get to know Emme.

“Please leave.” Goldman’s voice could be heard through the door.

“I can’t…” She sounded so bereft, it made his heart twist. “If I leave that means… that my company…”

There was a moment of silence.

“Victor!” her voice suddenly shouted, making him startle against the closed door. “I will make you regret this!”

_ Emme… _

Before he could stop himself, he pulled the door open.

Her back was to him, but she turned around when the door opened. Her fury turned to shock and then to embarrassment.

Victor said something inconsequential to Goldman so that it wouldn’t appear that he had opened the door just to see Emme, even though he totally _ had _ opened the door just to see Emme. “You’re going to make me regret it?”

Her face was red, but by God she reached her small hand forward and grabbed at his door to keep him from closing it. “All I need is two weeks, and I can show you a development plan that you regret passing up for the rest of your life!”

He looked down at her.

She looked up at him. She was afraid, he could tell that much, probably petrified, but she wasn’t backing down.

Victor found himself smiling. “One week.”

“Deal,” she said immediately.

He yanked the door closed, thinking she would have enough sense to pull her hand back.

Apparently she didn’t.

“Ouch!”

He couldn’t help laughing as he reopened the door, letting her free her hand. It was so amusing, watching her war with her desire to scream at him for closing her hand in the door and her knowledge that if she did so then he might renege on her company’s last hope.

“Thanks so much,” she said through gritted teeth, cradling her injured hand. “Is… is something funny?”

“I was just wondering how it is that you managed to stay alive until now.”

Emme blurted out, “You may be a super big shot, but you shouldn’t underestimate me! You just wait!”

He kept his smile in place, but inside he was a jumble of confusing feelings, feelings that didn’t get any clearer as he saw her realize what she had just said, turn beet red, and then turn and scamper off like a scared rabbit.

She wasn’t the Emme he remembered.

But… there was something about this dummy…

As he closed the door again and sat down at his desk, he realized that while he had intended for her to believe that it was her business skills that saved her business… it really was her business skills that had convinced him to give her company one last chance.

Victor rubbed his temples.

Fine. From now on, their relationship would be strictly business. He could do that.

He wasn’t an idiot.


	2. "Fool" - Lucien POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no explicit sex scene, and because this is a prequel, this is all Ares!Lucien, so, his mind/POV is a dark place to be.

Honeysuckle and coconut.

That’s what he noticed about her first; it’s what drew him out, actually. A delicious omega scent like that was quite unusual to come across in this part of campus. The hard sciences were still heavily slanted male and even more heavily slanted alpha/beta, even considering how rare omegas were to start with. The prejudice against even female betas in careers—if we hire her, is she just going to go off and get pregnant?—was considered a dead certainty for an omega, and omegas usually had large families, even these days. Officially, of course, everyone was very progressive now, but the fact remained that Ares definitely hadn’t smelled an omega this sweet in quite some time.

His cock stiffened.

_I must really be spending too much time in the lab, _he thought in a detached way, amused at his body’s reaction.

Ares got up and opened the door of his office, and saw her.

Hebe’s evol reared up inside him and he _knew_.

The Queen. This was the _Queen_, the girl he’d dedicated over fifteen years of his life to finding again.

_She’s using her evol on me… she’s making my evols stronger… my God, I think I can even feel it._

He smiled and let his eyes run over her.

_She’s come. She’s here. She found me? What is she doing here?_

She gave him a strange, somewhat nervous look, and said, “Hello, I’m looking for Dr.Lucien Xu.”

_I don’t think she’s faking… she has no idea who I am… she has no idea who and what she is, either, I think…_

_But then why is she using her evol?_

_Or… maybe her base evol is just that strong that it triggers Hebe’s evol already…_

“Lucien?” said Ares. “Why do you want him?”

“I’m the owner of Dream Forward Company, we’re a television production studio. Here, my card. I want to invite Dr. Xu to be the main guest on the final episode of _Miracle Finder_.”

He could almost laugh. The Queen was the producer for a crappy pseudoscience show about superpowers, when she herself was the future of _actual_ superpowers? The irony was too much. “_Miracle Finder_… I’ve heard of it. Why do you want Lucien as a guest?”

“My Uncle John—Professor John Chan, that is—he recommended—”

_She can’t possibly not know how terrible her show is. _“I’ve seen a few episodes of your show. The topics and guests are rather… laughable, aren’t they.”

“Well. Thanks for your opinion. Maybe you should have watched more than just a few episodes,” she said frostily.

Ares could have laughed again. She was offended! Could she actually like that garbage?

“I don’t need to take up any more of your time,” she continued, with the same _I could hit you_ smile on her face. “I got his phone number from my uncle, I’ll just call him.”

She tapped something on her phone. As she did so, Dr. Tao’s TA came in from outside.

“Hi, Dr. Xu!” the TA said breezily as she walked by, and Ares nodded with a little smile.

The Queen was frozen in shock. She didn’t even move to cancel her call, and sure enough, Ares’s phone began to ring in his pocket.

The sound of the ring startled her out of her trance. She hurriedly hit the call end button, flushing bright red.

“Would you like to come in my office to chat?” Ares said.

She was clearly mortified as she slunk in after him. “I… I’m so sorry, I didn’t expect you to be so young, Dr. Xu.”

He waved this aside with a smile. “No, I’m the one who didn’t introduce myself, it’s fine.”

The Queen was awkwardly half-offering some documents. “I… I would like to tell you about what we have planned for the series finale of _Miracle Finder._”

Ares gently pulled the papers from her hands and said, “Go right ahead. If you want to, you can use my blackboard.”

“Okay.”

As she walked over to the blackboard, Ares rapidly scanned over the documents.

_Puerile. Exactly the same as the episodes I saw._

_The Queen can’t possibly be satisfied with this._

_Is she… testing me? Is that why she’s found me like this?_

She was still setting off Hebe’s evol, but he was able to ignore it like a background hum now. When he’d nearly touched her to take the papers, though… “Excuse me. I’m afraid this show plan is unfeasible.”

“But… but I haven’t explained anything yet.”

“I read the documents.”

She stared. “You barely glanced at them.”

Oh, she obviously didn’t know a thing about him. Ares couldn’t help laughing. He got up and drew nearer, and saw her reflexively flinch, lower her eyes, and start to tilt her chin in the classic omega submission response, but consciously check her base impulse and rigidly returned herself to her original posture. “Let me explain it to you.”

_What a sweet little omega… so naturally obedient, aren’t you?_

“To start with, do you believe in superpowers?” He studied her face carefully.

“Yes, I think they might exist,” she said immediately.

What an interesting combination of firmness and hedging. “Why do you think so?”

“I grew up around the filming of _Miracle Finder,_ it was my dad’s pet project. I’ve seen with my own eyes… things that just couldn’t be explained, even though we tried to explain everything scientifically. So… maybe, superpowers are real.”

No mention of evol. Time to try a different angle. “Have you heard of something called… the Red Queen Hypothesis?”

It was a real concept in evolutionary biology—that predator and prey, parasite and host, would both continuously evolve in an arms race with each other without ever actually improving their relative position—but Ares merely wanted something that contained that keyword, _queen_, to see its effect on her.

She made no reaction to that word at all, only shaking her head as an answer.

“‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place,’” he quoted from memory. He did like Lewis Carroll.

“That’s a quote from _Through the Looking-Glass, _isn’t it?” she said, and he was pleasantly surprised. Most people didn’t care enough about accuracy to distinguish between the two Alice books.

“Quite right,” he said. “Humans have made themselves so powerful that natural selection no longer seems relevant to them. And because of this, they have forgotten how cruel the world really is.”

The Queen appeared to be really considering his words. “Oh… that’s strange, but I guess it’s true that humans haven’t needed to fear predators for a long time.”

“But this lack of fear is its own danger,” Ares said, a predator himself. “Do you know what to do if you’re in danger?”

“What should I do?” she said, taking his bait.

Now was the perfect time to try touching her. He leaned in, let his hands take hold of her elbows and the side of his head touch her skin as he whispered into her ear, “Trust your instincts.”

_Wonderful. Magnificent. Sublime._

Hebe’s evol had never reacted like this before. It was the strongest evol he’d ever experienced. And she didn’t even know she was doing it!

Reluctantly Ares let the Queen go and stepped back.

She was definitely giving him a look now. He could have almost laughed again. She may not have twigged on to how truly deadly he was, but a lovely young omega like her had certainly had too much experience with handsy alphas, and that was precisely what she was thinking about him right now, it was so obvious. He would need to reassure her… how ridiculous a bait would she take?

“Sorry, I just didn’t want us to be overheard.”

“But there’s nobody else here,” she said, with a slight narrowing of her lovely eyes.

Not quite that dumb, then. Try a side step. “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There may always be a crisis lurking in the darkness.”

That took the trick. “Oh… right, I get it.” Credulous little fool. Anything mystical made her turn off her reason. There were too many like her in the world.

They spoke a little more about the show. Her father’s legacy, and everything emanating from it, including belief in miracles… he could work with this, he could exploit this. The Queen had been wandering the world all this time and only just came to him by accident! Now that ought to be considered a miracle.

When she left his office, as soon as he had closed the door, he immediately picked up the phone to call Hades.

When he was done with the call and the preliminary arrangements for testing the girl, he leaned back in his chair.

Ares felt a curious combination of satisfaction and dissatisfaction; triumph at having begun to achieve the goal that had consumed him all these years, yet it had been nothing but an accident, and the path ahead looked so smooth. The Queen was not the well-trained opponent he expected; she wasn’t an opponent at all. Where was the challenge, the interest, the struggle?

Tricking and trapping the innocent and ignorant had no pleasure to it at all.

And his cock was still hard, he noted clinically. Probably because her scent was lingering in the room, since the fan wasn’t currently running.

The Queen wasn’t going to be available to him for _that_, of course… He hadn’t fucked an omega in over two years; finding one might be an interesting challenge.

No. On second thought, it would be too time-consuming and self-indulgent to find, let alone seduce, a rare and elusive unbonded omega. Knotting a beta felt just as good, anyway; maybe better, since he’d get to enjoy their pain. Especially if he was the beta’s first alpha and they were so sure they could handle a knot and he got to see it cross their face that they couldn’t handle it after all, when it was too late to un-join them. That always pleased the sadist in him.

He ended the night with his knot in a beta’s ass. This one hadn’t been lying when he said that he loved getting fucked by alphas, though, because there was no sign of pain on his face. Still. It wasn’t bad, he supposed. The itch was scratched for a while.

Ares gave the beta a fake phone number and walked out to his car.

When he pulled out his phone, he already had another message from Hades, so he called him back.

She really was the Queen. The Queen was right here in Loveland City, living only minutes away from the orphanage where Hades had lost her to begin with. How funny.

_You’re the right one to train her. I’ll get the approval of the twelve later, there’s no time to waste so get started immediately, Ares. I’m sure they’ll all approve. Now all we need is Helios. But when we get him, she’ll already trust you._

Ares smiled as he hung up, but then a sudden sharp pain seared through his chest, making him gasp and clutch at it.

He leaned on the steering wheel and panted until the pain eased enough for him to start the car and drive home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the canon game, they say the Red Queen Hypothesis comes from _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, which is wrong. As an insufferable pedant I could not allow this to stand uncorrected.


	3. "Sweetheart" - Kiro POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: there's a description of Kiro watching amateur porn that is alpha female/omega male and masturbating.

“Kiro! Kiro! You’re amazing!”

“Marry me Kiro!”

“Kiro, Kiro, over here Kiro!”

“I love you so much Kiro!” This last one came shrieking out of the mouth of a very short girl who looked maybe fourteen, tops, and was carrying a Kiro body pillow that was even taller than her.

Kiro couldn’t help laughing. “I love you too!” he called and waved.

She screeched even louder, suddenly went silent and rigid, and then toppled over, where Kiro couldn’t see her behind the crowd.

“Oh my God,” said Kiro, “is she alright?!”

“C’mon Kiro, you’ve gotta go,” his agent Savin was saying, tugging on his sleeve.

“But is she okay?” Kiro said as he was reluctantly lead away.

“She’s okay! She fell on the pillow!” someone yelled, and Kiro sighed with relief.

———

When he got back to his apartment, he did a brief walkthrough with his bug-finding equipment, then a little more thoroughly in his bedroom.

Satisfied that he had privacy, he unlocked a drawer with a key, pulled a small box out that had a combination lock and entered the combination. Inside was a dildo, and Kiro pulled it out and briefly checked that the batteries still had charge.

He got some quick absorbing towels ready, took his pants off, plugged his headphones in, brought the laundry basket over, and sat at his computer to log into his favourite amateur porn couple’s site. They were a bonded omega male and alpha female couple, and he liked that he could be pretty sure that the money he was paying (via crypto) was actually going to them, and that they weren’t being exploited. Plus, a lot of porn with omega males focused on humiliating and degrading them, even stuff that seemed vanilla at first glance. This couple used the term “hole”, which was his own preference for thinking about his body, and the alpha never called the omega anything but “love”.

What Kiro would give to have someone who called him “love.”

They had uploaded a new video and he hit play, slick already starting to trickle out of him onto the towel he had put down on the chair.

The camera started on the woman, reclining on a bed, fisting her cock and licking her lips as her husband climbed onto the bed. “So you want to ride me today, love?”

Kiro moaned a little, sliding the dildo into his own hole as he watched the man straddle his wife and take her cock inside himself.

As an omega, the only limitation to the number of orgasms Kiro could have per session was his own satisfaction and energy. When he was 18 and 19 he had more than once actually overdone it so much that he actually made himself too sore to touch again for days, sore enough that he had to put salve on it just to wear underwear. Now that he was 22 he was a little wiser.

“Alpha,” the omega man in the video was keening as he came, and Kiro was cumming too, watching the alpha cock slide in and out of the man’s hole. “Alpha, it feels so good~”

“You’re giving them such a show,” the alpha moaned, “they’re going to think I’m neglecting you, you’re fucking me so desperately.”

“I can’t get enough of you!”

They were kissing again, and Kiro was cumming for the third or fourth time, who was counting anyway.

The alpha broke the kiss and said breathily, “Are you ready for my knot, love? I’m so close.”

“Yes! Yes, I want your knot! Knot my hole! Please, alpha!”

“I love you so much,” the alpha groaned as she grabbed her husband’s hips and held him down against her, and Kiro let out a little gasp, because he could just make out the bottom of the swell of her knot blooming inside her omega, and it looked so amazing, it looked like everything he wanted—

“I love you too—I love—oh God, _alpha!” _moaned the omega because his alpha had sunk her canines into his gland.

Kiro came down from another orgasm, breathing hard, and with shaking fingers he pulled the dildo out and clicked off the vibration. He balled up the towel that had caught all his cum and dropped it into the laundry basket.

The video was still playing, a top-down view now. The alpha was licking the love bites she had left on her husband’s neck and shoulders, and he was murmuring something to her, too quietly for the camera to pick up. She laughed a little and looked up at his face.

Kiro quickly closed the window.

_No one will ever look at me like that… no one will ever touch me like that, love the real me like that…_

This was the only thing Kiro _didn’t_ like about using this couple’s material as wank fuel.

———

He was morose backstage at rehearsal the next day, bad enough that Savin actually told him to go take a walk and get some air, though he immediately followed it with the strict warning to be back in fifteen minutes _or else._

Great. Time to get the will to continue faking a smile from a fifteen minute walk.

Kiro decided to hit the closest convenience store and see if they had any of the chips with the alternate reality cards inside. The promotion was officially over and he had come _so_ close to completing the set but he was still missing one card.

Sure, he could just go on an online site and find that card by paying extra for it, but what was the fun in that? It was about the thrill of getting lucky. This was like gacha only with guaranteed chips… chips that he couldn’t eat, but he could feed them to birds, or the crew.

The birds seemed more grateful than the crew, usually.

He did seem to be having some luck that day, because even though he hadn’t done more than pull up the hood of his hoodie and change his body language to be passive and unimportant, no one took notice of him.

No one, until he reached for the last AR card promotion-marked bag of chips on the shelf and ended up putting his fingers against that of a young woman who wanted the same bag.

Kiro looked at her with a smile, hoping he could convince her to let him have the bag.

Her eyes widened in recognition, and she started to exclaim loudly, “Ki—”

He quickly put a finger to her lips just long enough to stop her talking, then put the finger back to his own in the _shh_ gesture. “Hey, I don’t want anyone to recognize me,” he whispered with the _we’re on the same team, right?_ grin that he used to get people to go along with what he wanted.

Kiro saw her understanding. People seemed to be looking over to see what the commotion was, so he quickly ducked down.

To his amusement, she ducked down next to him, even though there was really no reason for _her_ to do so, and if anything, the two of them crouching down together would look more weird and suspicious. Kiro could smell, faintly, that she was an omega too. Unconsciously he fidgeted at his own gland to reassure himself that he was keeping it perfectly dormant, not letting out even the tiniest hint of pheromones.

The girl started to laugh. She had a silly, sweet laugh, the kind of laugh that he loved to hear coming from the studio audience because it made everyone else laugh along. It was making him want to laugh. And she was really pretty laughing… she was just a really pretty girl, full stop. “This is so wild… I just saw your face all huge on a giant screen, and now here you are next to me, hiding like we’re both little kids… sorry, but it’s just funny!”

Kiro grinned. “Hmm, if we were both little kids, I’d be demanding that I get that last bag of chips.”

“Oh!” She looked at the chips. She didn’t seem to want to give them up either, because she bit her lip and then said, “Is this the kind you like?”

“Uh… I can’t actually remember if I’ve had that kind,” he admitted. “My manager doesn’t let me eat chips. Any kind of junk food, really. Unless it’s for a commercial. I just wanted the prize card from inside…” Suddenly Kiro really did feel like a little kid. “It’s really popular to collect them, right?” _Among twelve-year-olds, probably._

She frowned for a moment, then brightened and pulled open the bag and fished in it for the card in its plastic wrapper. “Here, how about you take the card and I take the chips?”

“Oh, sweet!” He took the card. “Heh, we’d be best friends now, if we were both little kids, right?”

Her face went all funny, and for a moment he cringed, thinking his awkward attempt at humour had really bombed, but then she blurted, “I didn’t pay for the chips yet!”

She rushed out to the counter, and Kiro followed behind, holding back his laughter as she bowed and apologized over and over while fumbling in her purse for her wallet to pay for the opened chips and bunch of other snack food. “Next time I come I’ll buy _ten_ bags, I’m _so_ sorry, I just forgot I hadn’t paid for it yet!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said the bemused cashier.

After she got her change and her bag of junk food, she looked over at Kiro and without even thinking about it he went with her outside the shop.

“Here, want a chip?” she said cheerfully, holding one out to him. “Just one should be fine, right?”

Kiro hesitantly took the chip. “Uh… thanks.”

She was popping a chip into her own mouth, so Kiro ate his as well.

Man, chips were so delicious… salty and crunchy and this one had a surprisingly good cucumber flavour.

“Do you…” Kiro stumbled around in his brain for an attempt at small talk, and could only come up with, “…like chips?”

She looked a little shy. “Yeah. Cucumber is my favourite flavour… oh!”

Kiro waited, because she was clearly gathering her courage.

“I’m Emme Xi, I own a television production company, Dream Forward, we make _Miracle Finder,_” she began, pulling a business card out and awkwardly trying to offer it to him politely with two hands while her purse and the junk food bag swung from her elbows. “I would love you have you on the last episode! And… and we can pay you, of course!”

“Last episode,” Kiro said, taking the card, “you mean _Miracle Finder_ is ending? I loved that show as a kid! I waited for it to come on every day.”

Her face twisted, and for a moment she looked like she might break down sobbing, but then she pulled herself back together and forced a smile onto her face again. “Yeah, well… unfortunately we lost our funding… but I’m determined to make the show end with a bang! And to have an idol like you would really make everyone tune in…”

“Me? A real life superhero on Miracle Finder?” When he was a little kid, he had thought many times about writing to the show to tell them about his power. But that was before he realized how evil his power was.

“Well, your fans say you can make anyone instantly fall in love with you,” said Emme.

He laughed, as if it were a ridiculous idea instead of being the exact truth. “But how would that work as a _Miracle Finder_ show? Me, on stage in front of the audience, staring at the camera and saying, ‘Love me… love me… love me!’”

She laughed along, and began suggesting ideas for the the final episode, but Kiro was not really listening. He was thinking about how in those awful final years in Black Swan, they had been trying to train his evol to the point where he could indeed brainwash people en masse remotely. And he had been getting closer all the time.

He came back to himself as Emme said anxiously, “But if you don’t like any of those ideas, I’m sure I can come up with something else.”

“No, they sound great!” Kiro assumed. “I’ll definitely do it! Let’s just go talk to my agent!”

For a moment she looked elated, and then her face fell again.

She had already talked to Savin and been denied. Yet she still got her smile back.

“Well, never mind! I’ll still make the last show the best it can be! Will you watch it?”

She was so cute and genuine and pretty… Kiro was surprised by just _how _pretty he found her. He _knew_ she was an omega, he wasn’t supposed to be attracted to her… “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it! I promise!”

Her face glowed with his simple promise to watch… she was really different from so many in this industry, wasn’t she?

“Maybe you can invite me later for some other show?” he said as she began to turn, only thinking that he wanted to see if that smile, that beautiful face, could get even happier.

It turned out that it could. “Oh! Oh, of course! And, and next time, it’ll be a real plan, very thorough and professional and everything, not… not my business card with cucumber chip dust on it.”

He laughed and held the card to his nose, sniffing at it theatrically. “No, no, I think you’re going to start a trend in scented cards!”

“And… and can I have your contact info, too?”

“Oh, I don’t carry cards like that, but I’ll add you on everything,” he promised.

Her happy face wavered a moment, barely long enough for him to tell that she thought he was just fobbing her off. But though she was disappointed, she seemingly wasn’t upset about it. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she said, as if giving him permission to ghost her. “It was so nice to talk with you this little while. You’ve given me energy to keep going! Speaking of which, I better go! I have a hungry crew who want to eat these!” She patted the junk food bag, laughed again, and waved as she left.

Kiro watched her go.

What a sweetheart.

What a thoroughly, actually _nice_ person.

And so friendly and so gorgeous…

There went his brain again… thinking about her like that… maybe he was letting his beta masquerade go to his own head…

Unconsciously he touched his front gland again.

The card, in its plastic sleeve, was still in his hand, along with Emme's card. He tucked Emme's card into his jacket pocket for the time being and opened up the AR card.

It was his missing card.

When he got back to the set, everyone was buzzing about how Kiro was absolutely knocking it out of the park, smashing every take.

"You see? Just listen to me and I'll keep you on the right track," Savin said triumphantly when he was escorting Kiro back to the car.

Kiro gave a big fake grin with his hand in his pocket, touching a card covered in chip dust.


	4. "Angel" - Gavin POV

Patrol was Gavin’s favourite part of his job. He got to go out and fly, get up, way up above everything, look down at it all. Most of the time he didn’t get to do anything personally, only to coordinate others—whether the special evol agents or the ordinary emergency services. Still, he was critically helping and he was doing something that only he could do. It felt good.

On that day he saw birds, flags, and even raindrops freeze in the air, and the traffic noises below suddenly cease.  
  
_Victor Lee’s in town, huh?_

The billionaire evolver didn’t use his evol out in public much, and when he did it had always been for the purpose of preventing a catastrophe. Still, protocol was to check it out every time.

It took only a moment to find the source using his agency-issued device.

He looked down at the tiny dots of the man and woman moving while all around them was still. Then the man rushed off, and the woman was left behind, scratching at her dyed brown hair, her body language clearly telegraphing her bewilderment as the time stop ended and everything went back to normal. A taxi—he noted the plates—was blaring its horn as it went through the crosswalk; Victor Lee must have paused time to pull the woman out of the way. But she was an evolver, and not one Gavin recognized.

Gavin clicked his radio. “This is agent B-7,” he said. “Energy wave in People’s Square. New target acquired. Taking action.”

He shadowed the woman from the air as she gathered dropped packages and then set off.

“A new one, eh B-7?” a familiar voice crackled from the radio: his fellow hell mission alum Eli. “This is B-11, I’m in the area HQ, shall I rendezvous?”

“Go ahead,” said control.

“Gimme the details, B-7,” Eli said cheerfully.

“Female, twenties, around 160cm. Light brown hair, slender build, wearing a blue and white dress.”

“How’s her face?”

“B-11,” reproved control.

“Hey, I just want to make sure I have the right lady,” Eli protested, not believably.

“I’m watching from the air,” said Gavin. “I haven’t had a close look at her yet, but I’m fairly sure I don’t recognize her… She’s changing direction now, going west towards the French Concession.”

After a minute, the radio crackled again, “I think I see her… oooooor maybe not, unless your target is entering a mid-rise.”

“That’s her,” Gavin confirmed. “Can you follow?”

“Already going in,” said Eli, “and by the way, her face is very nice.”

“B-11!” control scolded again.

———

Gavin stared at the dossier on his desk.

_Emme Xi Youran_  
_Birthdate: 1996 October 16_  
_Criminal record: None  
_ _Adopted from Loveland Home For Abandoned Children (see case files 2577, 2577a, 2577b, 4404c-f, 4998b), 2001 November 21, by Tristan Xi Shen_

Gavin breathed in, held it a moment, and let it out.

He had followed her from the air without ever suspecting that it was her. _Her._

He leaned back in his chair and felt for a crazy moment like he was falling through the air off the school roof again, his eyes looking up at the blue, blue sky and knowing down to the marrow of the bones that were about to shatter that he was seconds from death.

And then the notes of that piano, like a magic spell. Inexplicable. Not just inexplicable, but contrary to any possible explanation. There was no way, no way at all, that simply hearing piano music would let his long, long dormant evol not only awaken, but give him the instinctive knowledge to use it to prevent his free fall into the pavement._  
_

_“Hmm? Yesterday afternoon? Oh, that would have been little Emme Xi that you heard, she’s very pleasant to listen to, isn’t she? And she’s only in grade 10. She practices for an hour every day at that time, such a diligent girl. Why?”_

_“I just thought it was nice,” Gavin said self-consciously._

_The music teacher at the high school was an absent-minded and eccentric old man, who seemed blissfully ignorant that the young man in front of him was not only an obvious thug but one who had recently gotten his ass kicked._

_“I’m sure she won’t mind if you want to sit and listen,” Mr. Tao said kindly. “It’s actually good practice for the recital, to have a little audience. She should be here in about ten minutes, I think? She usually does her homework in the library first.”_

_“No, I was just curious,” Gavin said and hurriedly darted out of the building…_

Back in the present, Gavin sat up straight with a jerk and started to read the paper again.

Adopted… Emme was adopted…?

He opened his computer and tried to look up the referred case files.

_This document requires a higher security clearance level._

This was a bad sign, so he was surprised when the next file actually let him in.

_LHAC INCIDENT: KNOWN ORIGIN, NOT KIDNAPPED. This list is of the children who were neither kidnapped evolvers nor of unknown origin. Most are children of dead parents; a few were abandoned but for obvious, understandable reasons, given in parenthesis._

A list followed. Gavin found himself burning with anger at what the list writer had considered “obvious, understandable reasons” to abandon a child:

  * _Hypospadias._
  * _Club foot._
  * _Down’s syndrome._
  * _Very dark skin._
  * _Omega male, mixed race._
  * _Blind in one eye._

He moved on to the next file.

_LHAC INCIDENT: UNKNOWN ORIGIN LIST. Although a small percentage of the children at the Loveland Home for Abandoned Children between [redacted] and the incident in 2001 November where [redacted] were genuinely orphaned or abandoned, [redacted] suggests that the vast majority were actually kidnapped evolvers, cf case file 2577 and 2578. The following list are of children whose origins could not be ascertained, or who were abandoned inexplicably:  
_

_[Redacted.]_

“Very helpful,” muttered Gavin, and tried the last two.

_This document requires a higher security clearance level._

_This document requires a higher security clearance level._

Gavin let out a frustrated sigh and picked up the case file again.

_This individual’s identity was part of a rolling series of mistakes in 2001 regarding closed adoption files. According to the individual’s current birth certificate (left officially uncorrected), her place of birth is Osmanthus City, she was adopted from the Osmanthus Children’s Welfare Institute, and her original registered name was Jiang Mei. The choice of her adoptive father to give her the legal name “Xi Youran” for her suggests that he was aware of her true original legal identity of “Su Youran”._

_Tristan Xi died in 2014 June 3, drowning himself in front of a large crowd at Gold Mountain City Beach, having left a suicide note regarding his advanced cancer…_

Gavin drew in a breath, and was preparing to read on when his phone rang.

———

Gavin walked down the stairs in one of his usual undercover outfits—a plain white undershirt with a jean jacket and black pants.

He’d hoped he be able to be in some kind of real uniform to meet her again, but it hadn’t been possible.

To meet her again as an official assignment was…

A coincidence?

No, it couldn’t be a coincidence. Them having gone to the same high school, at least, had been noticed by someone, because it had been mentioned casually in the mission briefing as point of commonality, an opportunity for Gavin to get closer to her.

The notion that Gavin would try to get closer to her _as a mission_ was sickening.

He put his hand in his pocket and felt the little charm bracelet he’d added a GPS tracker to. This was his own idea, not part of the mission. She’d saved his life once, whether she knew it or not. Enough time had passed that her refusal to even let him confess his feelings no longer stung so sharply; he could even acknowledge that she didn’t owe him anything. No. He still owed her.

Keeping her safe would not be a mission. It would be personal, and he’d do it right.

“Our chief doesn’t even try to give him any cases,” Gavin could hear one of the most mediocre beat cops saying.

“Uh, is that so? Why is that?” an achingly familiar voice said in reply.

_God, who would have thought I’d instantly recognize it?_

_No, who am I even trying to kid that I wouldn’t recognize it…_

“They say he’s the son of somebody really high up… someone who’s riding coattails like that, so it’s best not to get involved with him. So, sweetheart, I’m suggesting you go back to your office and try to get somebody else to take this assignment!”

“What were you saying about riding coattails?” Gavin said, not bothering to fake amusement. The idea that he got anything out of his utter asshole of a father…

“N-nothing at all, Officer Bai! This young reporter was just asking for you, so I’ll leave you to it!”

The beat cop fled. Gavin smirked, finally able to focus on _her._

She was certainly looking at him, but he saw no recognition in her eyes at all.

“Emme, do you remember me?” On the outside he was cool; on the inside he was dying. _She doesn’t remember, she doesn’t even _remember _me…_

But she did.

That was made very obvious by how all at once her face went white, her eyes widened, and her chin tilted up, before she managed to say, “G-gavin Bai… from school?!”

Gavin was a little taken aback for a moment by the intensity of her fear. “What’s wrong?”

Emme squared her shoulders self-consciously and put on a smile, but her face was still pale. “Oh, it’s nothing _wrong_, I was just surprised! Didn’t expect you to be a cop…”

“Did you think I would end up in a prison cell instead?” he said, smiling. At first he said it flippantly, as a joke, but when her expression seemed to say that she expected exactly that, he felt ice cold inside. By the time she managed to meet his eyes the smile was a conscious position of his mouth only. _She disliked me that much?_

“Well, you were something of a, um, a celebrity, in our school, right?” she said, playing with the strap of her bag.

“Is that why you stood me up?” The words were out before Gavin could stop himself.

She had kept eye contact, and he saw utter bewilderment there. “Stood you up? When did I stand you up?”

Gavin raised his eyebrows at her.

She didn’t even remember that?!

He was letting himself indulge in his own personal life instead of the mission.

“Time to go.” He walked past her and caught a whiff of her pretty perfume, the same one she wore every day in high school… what a nostalgic scent.

“Go where?”

“We’re investigating, right?”

———

It was a warm night; she left the window open, the summer breeze drifting in.

Gavin had told her upfront that the bracelet was a tracker. He wished he could have told her that he could track her in the wind, also; but that would have actually explicitly broken a rule of the agency.

He could sense her in the air now, and it was doing funny things to his head.

And not only his head.

Gavin ran a hand through his hair, flustered, leaning against a chain link fence that creaked with misgiving at supporting his weigh.

This was just weird…

Why was he able to sense her so vividly?

His ability to sense things via wind—anemolocation, the evol research team had told him proudly—had up until this point been very vague. He’d thought he was just good with hunches until the agency realized that he was guessing things _too_ accurately and calling it a hunch, and did tests to realize that he could sense very broad strokes of what was nearby via wind currents.

If his wind sense was broad strokes with everything and everyone else, with her, the wind was giving him a full colour, larger than life Renaissance masterpiece. He could even sense her breath mingling with the wind. She was sighing, now, and taking off her—

His face got red and he abruptly turned his evol _off, _because it was _really_ starting to resemble a certain kind of Renaissance painting now. Venus being blown ashore, to be precise.

The worst part was he’d _already_ been hard, even before he had unexpectedly sensed her removing her dress with no bra underneath—did she not wear a bra? That seemed unbelievable, that she didn’t wear a bra, her breasts were so—

_Stop thinking about her breasts! You were never supposed to see that!_

He got on his bike to ride home. He’d only been checking on her to see if she was safe. That was all, that was _all_ he wanted to do with her now, keep her safe, he couldn’t expect anything more and he knew that.

When he was stopped at a red light, there was a car playing Radiohead’s “Creep” with the windows down, and he internally groaned at the irony.

_You’re just like an angel, your skin makes me cry_  
_You float like a feather in a beautiful world_  
_ I wish I was special…_

He took a right turn just to get away from the uncomfortably accurate lyrics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for this set! Thanks for reading, would love your thoughts.


End file.
